


Start Looking Forward and Stop Looking Back

by mcschnuggles



Series: Schnugg's Regressuary 2021 [6]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe, CGRE - Caregiver/Age Regressor, Caregiver!Sasha, Caregiver!Tim, Gen, Manipulative Elias Bouchard, Regressing!Jon, Therapist Elias Bouchard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29242821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcschnuggles/pseuds/mcschnuggles
Summary: Jon's trying to move forward, but there's something strange about his newest therapist...
Relationships: Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Series: Schnugg's Regressuary 2021 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138382
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45
Collections: Regressuary, Regressuary 2021





	Start Looking Forward and Stop Looking Back

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so glad I've finally written a TMA fic!

Fifteen minutes.

Jon watches the clock, counting every tick. He doesn’t make it a secret that he’s watching the time; he’s already made it plain how much he doesn’t want to be here.

Elias’s gaze bores into him, daring him to speak up, but he remains silent. He refuses to be guilted, to be reminded that Tim and Sasha pay good money for him to attend therapy, especially a therapist who already knows how to deal with age regressors, and he’s throwing it away by waiting out the clock.

Elias is not a good therapist. He was fine at first, but once the two of them got into a rhythm, once the catharsis of talking things through faded, there was nothing for Jon in these sessions. There was no moving forward. Only looking back, permanently focused on the ugliest parts of Jon’s past.

He especially likes to poke and prod at Jon’s trauma, never letting a single one rest for too long. _Tell me again about the housefire, the one that burnt your hand. Why did you go back into the house, Jon? To save your ex-girlfriend’s cat? Or was there something more that drew you back inside?_

It was the cat. It was always the cat. But Elias wouldn’t listen.

_Tell me about the mugging, the one that left the scar on your neck. You were regressed for about a week after that, correct? Why do you think they jumped you in that alleyway? What about these men made you so scared?_

Apparently “they were built like fucking beasts and held me at knifepoint” wasn’t a sufficient answer. Elias wanted to know the markings on their uniforms, why two delivery men would attack him. Had he seen something? Why that matters is beyond Jon.

_Tell me about the car wreck, the one that left the scar on your shoulder. That’s how you lost your mother, if I’m right? My apologies. Do you think that’s why you refuse to ride in a vehicle, even now? Or was there something else at play?_

Elias always likes to ask those kinds of questions, as if there’s some secret reason Jon is messed up and high maintenance instead of the obvious reasons.

_Tell me about the spider bite from when you were eight, the one that sent you to A &E. Very odd for a magician to have a pet spider, don’t you think? And you went mute for a year. Why didn’t you want to speak after that?_

Jon was compliant at first, telling him each story with every detail he could, but after a while, it was beginning to feel like they weren’t getting anywhere.

There was an odd, calm satisfaction in Elias’s face when he listened to Jon speak, as if he was mulling over every unfortunate circumstance with relish. It was never about addressing possible solutions, ways Jon could move forward.

No, the focus of their discussions was always his trauma, the same trauma, over and over and over again.

Elias sighs, dropping eye contact to make a note on his clipboard.

He’s always making notes, always scribbling at his clipboard. Jon hates the sound—why is it always so loud? Jon fights back the urge to cover his ears, watching the seconds tick away. Ten minutes left.

“I’d like to talk to Big Jon now.” Elias says, peering up at Jon over the rim of his glasses.

Jon shakes his head. Once. Twice. Sasha promised him this morning that he could be as little for as long as he wanted, and he wasn’t ready to come out yet.

“Jon.” Elias’s voice yields no room for disobedience, and Jon hates it.

He hates being told what to do, how to feel, having to go to these _stupid_ therapy appointments three times a week. Something dark and angry bubbles up in his chest, but he shoves it down as ferociously as he can.

Elias’s eyes bore into him again, but he says nothing. It’s a long, tense moment before Elias returns to his notes, filling the silence with that incessant scribbling noise.

Tim and Sasha used to wait in the lobby for him, just in case he decided he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to go home, but that was weeks ago. They both had jobs to attend, and they couldn’t waste their afternoons hovering over Jon.

He can’t leave, so the most he can do is self-soothe. He keeps a dummy in his bag, as well as a stuffed cat, but both of those feel too much right now. Against his wishes, he’s surfacing from headspace, but he’d rather be in a fuzzy in between state than fully little in front of his strange therapist.

“Let’s not pick at our skin, Jon.”

Jon jumps, looking down at his thumb just in time to see fresh blood blooming against his already weathered skin. He has an awful habit of picking at it, and for whatever reason, that’s the only unhealthy habit of his Elias wants to break.

“Right, sorry.” Jon’s voice comes out as barely more than a whisper, rough from days of disuse. He hardly ever speaks, but somehow apologies just come stumbling out without him meaning them to.

He looks back up at the clock, and for one brief, horrible moment, he and Elias make eye contact. If he didn’t know better, he would say Elias were regarding him rather fondly. The bones of a kind expression are all there—soft expression, relaxed posture, the slightest upturn of the lips—but there’s something alight in his eyes, dangerously close to joy.

The minute hand hits twelve, and a few seconds later, the egg timer on the corner of Elias’s desk chimes in response.

“I believe that’s all the time we have today.” Elias says, laying his pencil flat. “Congratulations, Jon, on another successful attempt to run out the clock. See you Friday.”

* * *

Jon walks home.

He gets anxious in cars, and even more so on public transportation, so that only leaves him with one option. If he’s being honest, walking in crowds makes him anxious too, but at least that’s a problem he can do something about.

He’s taken the walk home from the therapist’s office enough times by now that he knows which streets to avoid, and he makes it home with only a few close encounters.

Tim and Sasha aren’t due back from work for a few more hours, so Jon eats an early dinner in front of the television and spends the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the kitchen.

Jon likes doing chores, even if he seldom gets a chance to do them. It gives his mind something else to focus on, especially if he can get a show or some music going for background noise. Especially when he’s in an uneasy, in between mindset, stuck between headspaces, it provides some much-needed grounding. He almost considers making tea for the express purpose of having more dishes to clean when he hears the sound of a key in the front door.

“Hey there, boss-man!” Tim greets, even though Jon hasn’t been his boss in well over two years. “No house parties while we were gone, eh?”

Jon isn’t sure why Tim even took him under his wing, but his best guess is pity. After all, it’s hard not to pity someone whose emergency contact is his coworker.

Something in Jon’s expression gives Tim pause. “You alright, Jon?” Tim asks. “You look tired.”

Jon shrugs. His fingers twitch, and part of him wants to start signing, but it’s a hard habit to resume.

His grandmother resented him for a lot of things, but one of the things she was most vocal about was having to learn sign language that year he went mute. She made it very clear she’d just prefer him not to talk, and after that year, any signing he did was met with a sharp gaze.

The first time Tim found him regressed—after he’d been admitted to the hospital—he was signing. Imagine his surprise when Tim was not only able to understand, but to sign his responses.

“Are you…” Tim trails off. He takes a couple steps forward, nothing too quick or too sudden to be startling. “Are you small? Big? Somewhere in between? You wanna talk?”

“I…” Jon trails off, pinching the bridge of his nose. It used to be so easy to gather up his focus. What happened?

Sasha’s voice rings out from the hallway. “Tim, you can’t just leave the door—Jon?” She gently pulls the door shut behind her, dropping her purse by the door. “Are you alright?”

“Maybe we should hold off on the big questions.” Tim suggests. Jon must’ve bristled, or taken a small step back, or something to show that he’s uncomfortable. Tim always gives in at the first sign of trouble. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of the living room, yeah?”

“Have you eaten yet, Jon?” Sasha asks.

“…Yes.” Jon answers slowly. He needs to speak up about this. He knows he does. Anything else just feels like running away.

Like it’s what Elias wants him to do.

Jon joins Tim and Sasha at the table, taking the seat with a small plate of biscuits in front of it. Sasha has somehow convinced herself Jon doesn’t eat enough, so even if he’s said he’s eaten, she’s still going to try and feed him something. He supposes there are worse ways to be bribed.

“You know, we didn’t want to say anything, but we’ve noticed a pattern,” Sasha begins. She and Tim share a nervous look, effectively passing the baton between them.

“It’s just that you always seem a little more withdrawn after your sessions,” Tim continues. “Even if it’s been a good day, you know?”

“And I know we promised not to ask about therapy but we’re starting to get concerned. So is everything going okay?”

“You don’t have to be specific,” Tim rushes to add. “So long as it isn’t what’s been making you so sad, we don’t need to know anything else. We just wanna make sure you’re okay, bud.”

Jon takes a minute to take that in, that Sasha and Tim not only noticed something was wrong, but wanted to take steps to approach it.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Of _course_ Sasha and Tim would notice. They’re so damn attentive to him, even when he’s least expecting it. What did he ever do to deserve them?

His eyes well with tears, and before he can stop himself, he sobs.

“Oh, Jon.” Sasha moves to stroke his hair, but pulls back at the last second. No sudden moves, no sudden contact. That’s the general rule when he gets overwhelmed, but he needs cuddles _now_.

He holds out his arms and finds himself flanked on both sides by concerned caregivers.

“I’m guessing that’s a yes on something being wrong with the therapy,” Tim mutters, and over his head, Jon hears Sasha smack his shoulder.

Jon cries out all his frustrations. Of being trapped in a stuffy office that smells like mildew and being forced to tell the same stupid stories over and over again. Of having to walk there by himself and walk home just as lonely, even though the sessions always leave him with a pit in his stomach and a nervous energy that won’t let him sit still.

He cries and cries until he has nothing left to cry about, and only then does the tension fall out of Sasha’s shoulders.

Jon doesn’t blame her for getting so wound up. He cries so rarely that a breakdown like this is considered near crisis mode.

“I want to end my therapy sessions with Elias,” Jon says finally.

Sasha produces a fidget cube out of thin air and slips it between his fingers. “Is something wrong?”

“The sessions are just… uncomfortable?” Jon says. It’s hard to put into words how uneasy being in Elias’s office makes him, and he’s afraid of sounding whiny. He already knows he’s a difficult person to deal with, big or little, but he doesn’t want to make it even worse.

Tim’s face fills with sympathy. “How so, buddy?”

“He just… focuses on my trauma a lot? Not in an expected way. It’s like he wants me to repeat the same stories to him over and over, and it’s… bad.”

Jon pushes back those bitter thoughts, the ones that tell him he’s a college graduate that can still barely string a sentence together. He looks up from the fidget cube to Sasha and Tim, to find their faces concerned but nonjudgmental.

“I told you, Sasha,” Tim says. “I said that guy gives me the heebie-jeebies, and no one listened.”

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Yes, Tim, you were absolutely right. Congratulations, your medal is in the mail.”

“I didn’t notice either, not at first,” Jon adds, just to stave off any potential bickering. “It’s like boiling a frog, I guess? It sounds so stupid now that I say it out loud.”

“It is _not_ ,” Sasha says, so firmly that Jon is inclined to believe her. “You can’t settle in therapy. We’ll find you someone who’s a better fit. How long have you been thinking like this?”

Jon doesn’t say anything, instead choosing to play with the clicker on the fidget cube.

“So weeks,” Sasha guesses.

Five, to be precise, but Jon knows they don’t have to be. The idea of weeks in general is bad enough without a specific number in front of it.

“Would you want to consider another therapist?” Sasha asks. “You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to, obviously. But it’s up to you.”

“I think I would? I’ve been getting better. I want to get better.” If anything, he misses work, he misses having a set schedule and structure. Maybe something a little less stressful than his last job, since that’s what landed him in the hospital, but something quiet, something where he wouldn’t have to deal with so many people, might be nice.

Tim smiles softly. “We know you do, buddy. But you don’t have to rush anything if you’re not ready.”

Smallness pushes at Jon’s consciousness, one that he doesn’t resist. He’s said his piece, and it’s hard to stay big when Tim smiles at him like that. “I think I’m ready.”

“We could try some other therapists,” Sasha says. She must be able to somehow detect when he’s slipping, because she starts to stroke his hair in that way that makes him melt when he’s small. “Maybe Jane—”

“No.” Tim cuts her off before she can even finish the name.

“Tim—”

“Prentiss keeps a fish tank full of bugs in her office. I’m not allowing it.”

“Maybe Lukas—”

“Lukas decorates his office like a ship and spends half your time talking about sailing.”

“Well,” Sasha says, with a noteworthy level of patience, “maybe we should leave this decision up to _Jon_ , then.”

“Who’s yours?” Jon asks. He wanted to clarify, but the word “therapist” is a little out of his grasp at the moment.

“Still seeing Orsinov, aren’t you?” Sasha asks.

“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Tim promises, dodging the question in a way that only confirms he’s once again between therapists. He rubs a hand up and down Jon’s back. “Besides, that was a lot of words, huh?”

“Why don’t we fish out a board game?” Sasha suggests. It’s a guaranteed yes from Jon, who has a love for what Tim calls “boring activities.”

Board games, puzzles, and naps are among his favorite activities.

Sasha goes to fetch a game, leaving Tim and Jon alone in the kitchen. Tim hasn’t stopped rubbing his back.

“I’ll call first thing in the morning and end your sessions,” Tim says. If Jon didn’t know better, he’d think Tim almost sounds angry. Not at Jon, but at himself maybe? Jon’s never been able to tell for sure. “Would you like that?”

Jon nods.

“Things are gonna turn out fine,” Tim promises. “We’ll get you sorted.”

And much to his surprise, Jon actually believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> mcschnuggles.tumblr.com


End file.
